The Dilemma at the Heart of America's Approach to Africa

By Howard W. French

If Washington really wants to promote African democracy, why is it partnering with the continent's autocrats to create military spy programs?

U.S. marines watch as members of the Uganda army train at a military training school in Singo. (Reuters)

JUBA, South Sudan -- In an extraordinary pair of articles published
this week, The Washington Post has filled in the picture of how the U.S.
military and intelligence establishment have worked to create a network of a
dozen or so air bases for spying purposes across Africa. What is most remarkable about
the articles are not the details themselves, which involve small, specially
equipped turboprop aircraft flying surveillance missions out of remote
airfields in the Sahel and in equatorial East Africa.

What stands out most about the articles, instead, is the way
that this news has cast the African continent as a place where serious American
interests are at play. Such things are all too rare for the mainstream
media, which typically chronicles African political
upheaval, violence and suffering as distant and almost random incidents or
miscellany with little connection to life outside of the continent.

The Africa of our day-to-day coverage is dominated, in other
words, by vivid splashes of color, by scene and emotion, and it is largely
bereft of form or of pattern, and of politics and ideas that could help connect
one development to another or connect the whole to the rest of the world. Some of this may be changing slowly with the recent sharp
rise of China's profile throughout the continent, which has drawn a belated
response from a United States suddenly eager to avoid seeing the continent be snatched away from the West, as some fear.

The Post pieces were ultimately as remarkable for what they
didn't say as what they did, though. And in this regard, they highlight the
need for the media to hold the actions of the Unites States up against its
rhetoric, much as it is wont to do with regard to China, whose rote-like
discourse on Africa emphasizes terms like "win-win," and
"non-interference," etc.

By helpful coincidence, the Post's stories, which detail the
ongoing militarization of Washington's policies toward Africa, were published
at the very same time that the Obama Administration was unveiling its
purportedly new strategy toward the continent.

The leading messenger for this was Hillary Clinton, whose
talk yesterday about economic opportunity for American businesses in Africa was
as welcome as it was overdue. As a spate of recent articles has madeclear,
she spoke of the Africa as a place of strong economic growth and the continent
with the highest returns on investment. It is precisely Chinese firms' awareness of
this that has been driving them, and hundreds of thousands of
Chinese migrants, to Africa in recent years in search of opportunity.

In policy briefings for the press, however, and in Clinton's
own statements, the promotion of democracy was given pride of place in a new
American agenda for Africa, and this is where the rub comes between rhetoric
and reality.

The Post piece reveals that the key American allies in
Washington's military and intelligence push are the leaders of Burkina Faso in
West Africa and Uganda in East Africa. These two men, Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso
and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, have been in office respectively for 25 and 26
years. Both took power by force. Both have resisted real
democratization in their countries. And both have been prolific and mischievous
meddlers in neighboring countries, where their adventures have sown death and
havoc, routinely employed child soldiers, and have involved lucrative arms trafficking as well as the
organized pillage of natural resources either for their own benefit or for allies within their regimes.

Another American ally, this one emerging, as described by
the Washington Post, is the year-old state of South Sudan, a country that
Clinton described as a "success." That will come as a surprise to many of the
people here, whose own president has recently acknowledged the looting of $4
billion by his own associates from state coffers.

If Washington wishes to be taken seriously by Africans it
has as much work to do as China in squaring words and deeds.
Yesterday, the White House said its new policy commits the United States to advance democracy by "strengthening institutions at every level,
supporting and building upon the aspirations throughout the continent for more
open and accountable governance, promoting human rights and the rule of law,
and challenging leaders whose actions threaten the credibility of democratic processes."

One of the biggest impediments to the continent's emergence,
however, is the very existence of leaders like Compaoré and Museveni, who come
to see themselves as irreplaceable, confusing their own persons with the state
and seeking to remain in power indefinitely.

If Washington genuinely wishes to prioritize democracy in
Africa, it might wish to privilege relations with the already substantial and
growing number of states that are governed more democratically than places like
these. For old friends like Museveni and newer ones like Compaoré, meanwhile,
it is time to reexamine the question of what friendship is for and to ask whom
does it really benefit?

If, on the other hand, American policy is really about fighting an endless
succession of enemies, which is what seems to drive the security agenda that
the Post has so usefully lifted the veil on, then candor should require
admitting that building democracy is really important only when it is convenient.